2,778 entries categorized "Judiciary / Cases"

May 03, 2016

Politco reports a federal judge delivered a blow Monday to Twitter's drive to release more details on surveillance orders it receives, but the tech firm won a chance to try to reformulate its case. U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Rogers said the government has the power to prohibit the release of classified information, barring claims Twitter made in a lawsuit filed two years ago challenging as unconstitutional the limits federal officials have placed on publication of some statistics about surveillance demands. "The First Amendment does not permit a person subject to secrecy obligations to disclose classified national security information," Rogers wrote, citing a 1980 Supreme Court case about a former CIA analyst publishing the names of CIA personnel overseas.

May 02, 2016

Reuters reports Saudi Arabia has warned the United States that a proposed U.S. law that could hold the kingdom responsible for any role in the Sept 11, 2001, attacks would erode global investor confidence in America, its foreign minister said on Monday. The minister, Adel al-Jubeir, speaking to reporters in Geneva after talks with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, which mainly focused on Syria, denied that Saudi Arabia had "threatened" to withdraw investment from its close ally. The New York Times reported last month that the Riyadh government had threatened to sell up to $750 billion worth of American assets should the U.S. Congress pass a bill that would take away immunity from foreign governments in cases arising from a "terrorist attack that kills an American on American soil".

April 28, 2016

The Wall Street Journal reports the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced Wednesday it wouldn't consider telling Apple Inc. how the agency was able to unlock a terrorist’s iPhone. The decision brings to an abrupt end an internal government debate about how much to tell Apple about a newly discovered security vulnerability in one iPhone model. The FBI decision not to initiate a broad governmental discussion called the Vulnerabilities Equities Process—in which a number of agencies explore whether to disclose software vulnerabilities to the affected companies—means Apple will likely be kept in the dark about exactly how the government was able to crack the model 5c iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, who along with his wife killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., in December.

April 27, 2016

The New York Times reports the Justice Department has issued new rules that give prosecutors in Washington greater oversight and control over national security cases after the collapse of several high-profile prosecutions led to allegations that Chinese-Americans were being singled out as spies. The new rules are intended to prevent such missteps, but without undermining a counterespionage mission that is a top priority for the Obama administration. In December 2014, the Justice Department dropped charges against two former Eli Lilly scientists, Guoqing Cao and Shuyu Li, who had been accused of leaking proprietary information to a Chinese drugmaker.

April 21, 2016

The Washington Post reports a federal prosecutor in New York has opened a criminal investigation involving the Panama Papers — a trove of materials from a Panamanian law firm that show a massive, secretive world of offshore industry. In a letter to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara wrote that his office had “opened a criminal investigation regarding matters to which the Panama Papers are relevant,” and he asked to speak with someone who had worked on the project. The Guardian newspaper, which was among those to analyze the materials, posted a copy of the letter on its website.

The New York Time reports Iran reacted furiously on Thursday to a United States Supreme Court ruling that Iran’s central bank must pay nearly $2 billion to American victims of terrorist attacks, calling the ruling thievery and a new threat to any improvement in relations. A spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Hossein Jaberi Ansari, said in a statement quoted by state media that the court’s ruling on Wednesday was a mockery of international law and “amounts to appropriation of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s property.”

April 20, 2016

The Washington Post reports a public advocate appointed by the nation’s secretive surveillance court last year argued that a little-known provision of the PRISM program, which enables the FBI to query foreign intelligence information for evidence of domestic crime, violated the Constitution. But the court disagreed with her. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court asked Amy Jeffress, the advocate, in August to assess the provision, according to a court opinion filed in November but released by the intelligence community only on Tuesday

BBC News reports the Supreme Court is allowing the families of victims of a 1983 bombing in Beirut and other terror attacks to collect nearly $2 billion in frozen Iranian assets. The court ruled in favor of more than 1,300 relatives of the 241 U.S. service members killed at a Marine barracks. The U.S. government holds the Lebanese Shia Islamist movement Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, responsible. Both Hezbollah and Iran have denied any involvement. Iran's central bank, Bank Markazi, tried to defy court orders demanding payment for losses. It opposed a law that directs its U.S. assets be turned over to the families.

The New York Times reports a bill opposed by the Obama administration that would expose Saudi Arabia to legal jeopardy for any role in the Sept. 11 attacks appeared to gain momentum on Tuesday when the senator holding it up said he would be open to supporting it. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said in an interview on Tuesday that he would drop his opposition to the bill — predicting it could pass the Senate next week — if the sponsors of the legislation agreed to changes that he believed were important to protect American interests abroad. He did not specify what changes he was requesting.

April 18, 2016

The Associated Press reports the Supreme Court is taking up an important dispute over immigration that could affect millions of people who are living in the country illegally. The Obama administration is asking the justices in arguments Monday to allow it to put in place two programs that could shield roughly 4 million people from deportation and make them eligible to work in the United States. Texas is leading 26 states dominated by Republicans in challenging the programs President Barack Obama announced in 2014 and that have been put on hold by lower courts.

April 14, 2016

The Washington Post reports Microsoft wants a federal judge in Seattle to strike down a law that allows courts to prohibit a tech company from telling customers that the government has sought their data. In a civil suit filed Thursday against the Justice Department, the tech giant revealed that in the past 18 months alone federal courts have issued almost 2,600 orders preventing Microsoft from alerting customers their data has been obtained in criminal probes. Notably, more than two-thirds — some 1,750 orders — had no fixed end date.v

April 11, 2016

The New York Times reports a Navy officer who became a naturalized American citizen has been charged with providing classified information to China, United States officials said. The charges against the officer, Lt. Cmdr. Edward C. Lin, who was born in Taiwan, are part of a secretive espionage case in which Commander Lin is also accused of visiting a prostitute. One United States official who was not authorized to speak publicly, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Navy officials believed Commander Lin provided secret information to a Chinese girlfriend.

April 06, 2016

The Washington Post reports FBI agents entered Keith Gartenlaub’s home in Southern California while he and his wife were visiting her relatives in Shanghai. Agents wearing gloves went through boxes, snapped pictures of documents and made copies of three computer hard drives before leaving as quietly as they had entered.The bureau suspected that Gartenlaub was a spy for China.The FBI had obtained a secret search warrant to enter the house, citing national security grounds. But since the search in January 2014, no spy or hacking charges have been brought against him. Instead, seven months later, he was charged with the possession and receipt of child pornography. He has denied the charges, but a jury convicted him in December.

April 01, 2016

The Washington Post reports a Maryland appeals court has issued what civil liberties groups called the first appellate opinion in the country stating that police must obtain a warrant before using covert cellphone-tracking devices, rebuking Baltimore police and prosecutors for “misleading” judges for years about secret and “unconstitutionally intrusive conduct.” Maryland’s intermediate Court of Special Appeals issued the strongly worded opinion late Wednesday following a March 3 order that Baltimore police could not use evidence collected by a cell-site simulator device against defendant Kerron Andrews, charged with attempted murder in 2014. Such devices, known by commercial names such as StingRay, Triggerfish and Hailstorm, imitate a cellular tower to have phones in an area connect to it. That enables real-time tracking of phones. The briefcase-size devices can be transported in vehicles and collect data from any bystanders’ phones in range

March 25, 2016

The Washington Post reports the highest-ranking U.S. Navy officer convicted so far in a massive bribery scandal is expected to be sentenced to years in prison Friday for selling military secrets to an Asian defense contractor in exchange for prostitutes, luxury hotel stays and other favors. Capt. Daniel Dusek, the former commander of the USS Bonhomme Richard, an amphibious assault ship, is likely to receive between two and four years behind bars during his sentencing hearing in U.S. District Court in San Diego, according to court records filed by prosecutors and defense attorneys.

March 24, 2016

The Washington Post reports a Chinese businessman pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court in Los Angeles to helping two Chinese military hackers carry out a damaging series of thefts of sensitive military secrets from U.S. contractors. The plea by Su Bin, a Chinese citizen who ran a company in Canada, marks the first time the U.S. government has won a guilty plea from someone involved with a Chinese government campaign of economic cyberespionage. The resolution of the case comes as the Justice Department seeks the extradition from Germany of a Syrian hacker — a member of the group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army — on charges of conspiracy to hack U.S. government agencies and U.S. media outlets.

The Washington Post reports the Justice Department on Thursday announced it has indicted seven hackers associated with the Iranian government and charged them with cybercrimes. The crimes include disrupting U.S. banks’ public websites from late 2011 through May 2013 and with breaking into a small dam in Rye, N.Y., in an apparent attempt to stop its operation. The indictment marks the first time the government is charging people linked to a national government with disrupting or attempting to disrupt critical U.S. infrastructure or computer systems of key industries such as finance and water.

March 22, 2016

Wired reports just as the FBI’s standoff with Apple seemed to be coming to a head, the government has abruptly changed course. And it may be backing down altogether from the most public battle in the growing war between law enforcement and tech firms over encryption. On Monday afternoon, the Justice Department filed a motion for a continuance on a hearing set to happen tomorrow in Riverside, California, where it would have argued its case that Apple must help it to crack the iPhone 5C of dead San Bernardino killer Syed Rizwan Farook. The FBI hasn’t given up on accessing the data in Farook’s phone. But it now says it may not need Apple’s assistance to crack the device after all, which it had previously told a judge it could legally compel using the 1789 law known as the All Writs Act.

March 17, 2016

Wired reportsApple’s latest brief in its battle with the FBI over the San Bernardino iPhone offered the tech company an opportunity to school the Feds over their misinterpretation and misquotations of a number of statutes and legal cases they cited as precedent in their own brief last week. Many viewed Apple’s arguments as a withering commentary on the government’s poor legal acumen. According to Apple, many of the cases the government uses to support its argument that the All Writs Act can be used to compel Apple to help crack the phone don’t actually have anything to do with the All Writs Act, or encryption, or anything of relevance to the current case.

March 14, 2016

Wired reports if there’s anything the world has learned from the standoff over the encrypted iPhone of San Bernardino killer Syed Rizwan Farook, it’s that the FBI doesn’t take no for an answer. And now it’s becoming clear that the government’s determination to access encrypted data doesn’t end with a single iPhone, or with Apple, or even with data stored on devices. It may extend as far as any app that encrypts secrets in transit or in the cloud. Messaging service WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook and has encrypted messages between its Android users for the past two years, is the next tech firm to be drawn into the widening battle between U.S. law enforcement and Silicon Valley over encryption.

March 04, 2016

The Wall Street Journal reports Twitter is the main player in a case heating up in federal court in Oakland. The court fight doesn’t involve a consumer device but information that Twitter wants to make public but that the government says cannot be released because it contains classified details about secret terrorism investigations. Twitter sued the U.S. government in 2014 for the right to disclose more details about the scope of the government’s national security requests for user data. It claims the government is restricting its First Amendment rights by barring the release of information the company claims wasn’t properly classified. And it wants the court to declare that it can’t be prosecuted for releasing it.

March 03, 2016

The Star Tribune reports four young Twin Cities men facing federal terrorism charges have been chosen for a first-of-its kind deradicalization program under the supervision of a Minneapolis judge and a German expert on Islamic extremism. U.S. District Judge Michael Davis ordered the defendants to undergo an evaluation by the German scholar, who will visit Minnesota in April. The evaluation will factor into Davis’ sentencing decisions — the four face potentially long prison sentences — and will help in designing a program to steer each away from radical ideology. Davis said the evaluation would help him understand their motives and potential for rehabilitation

March 01, 2016

The Wall Street Journal reports Indiana unconstitutionally discriminated against Syrian refugees by freezing federal funds that were supposed to help fleeing families resettle in the state, a federal judge has ruled. The decision is the latest legal setback for state efforts to resist plans by the Obama administration to bring in thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing the civil war in that country. According to a lawyer involved, it marks the first time a court has ruled that a state opposing the resettlement process violated the U.S. Constitution. In other cases, like one Texas, states have sued to block Syrians from moving into their borders. Law Blog, for instance, wrote about a judge’s rejection of Texas’ request to halt Syrian resettlement.

The Associated Press reports the high-stakes legal fight between Apple Inc. and the Justice Department over a locked iPhone is moving from the courts to Congress. FBI Director James Comey and Apple chief lawyer Bruce Sewell are appearing before the House Judiciary Committee for a hearing on encryption Tuesday afternoon. The hearing comes amid two significant and conflicting court rulings in New York and California on whether Apple can be forced to help the FBI gain access to locked phones. Comey warns in his prepared testimony that technological advancements have been accompanied by "new dangers."

The New York Times reports a combat soldier who is Sikh sued the Defense Department on Monday, saying his beard and turban had made him the subject of religious discrimination because the Army was putting him through arduous helmet and gas mask testing that no other soldier goes through. The complaint, filed in Federal District Court in Washington by Capt. Simratpal Singh, a decorated West Point graduate and observant Sikh, said that, unlike other soldiers, he had been ordered to undergo three days of performance tests that “target him solely because of his religious beliefs.” The Army has a ban on long hair and beards, which it says are a battlefield liability because helmets and gas masks must fit well to work.

February 17, 2016

The Associated Press reports Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook says his company will fight a federal magistrate's order to help the FBI hack into an encrypted iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino, California shooters. The company said that could potentially undermine encryption for millions of other users. Cook's response, posted early Wednesday on the company's website, set the stage for a legal fight between the federal government and Silicon Valley with broad implications for digital privacy and national security. U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym had ordered Apple to help the FBI break into an iPhone belonging to Syed Farook, one of the shooters in the Dec. 2 attack that killed 14 people. Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, died in a gun battle with police.

February 05, 2016

The Miami Herald reports the war court prosecutor is arguing that public disclosure of a transcript of a public hearing held at Guantánamo last year could endanger national security in response to a legal motion brought by 17 news organizations protesting pick-and-choose secrecy in the Sept. 11 pretrial hearings. Army Brig. Gen Mark Martins makes the argument in a filing obtained by The Miami Herald that was still being reviewed for sensitive information on Thursday and not publicly released. At issue is the Pentagon’s decision to black out large portions of a 379-page transcript of an Oct. 30 hearing that included testimony from two soldiers who work at Guantánamo’s most clandestine prison, called Camp 7. “That this information was uttered in a public session or is reported in news coverage does not render the information unprotected or vitiate the damage further disclosures would beget,” prosecutors wrote Jan. 29 in the 29-page filing in the war court case against Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other men accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

February 04, 2016

The Washington Post reports a 21-year-old Kansas man pleaded guilty on Wednesday to attempting to detonate what he thought was a 1,000 pound ammonium nitrate bomb on the Fort Riley Army base in Manhattan, Kansas. John Booker of Topeka was netted in an FBI sting in 2014 when he was introduced to an FBI informant, whoeventually led Booker to another informant. The two insiders helped Booker with the construction of a bomb made primarily of inert components. According to a Department of Justice statement, Booker told the informants that he “dreamed of being a fighter in the Middle East, and proposed capturing and killing an American soldier” and that a suicide attack would ensure that he hit his target.

February 03, 2016

The Associated Press reports a North Carolina man killed his neighbor and stole the man's money so he could buy an assault rifle to carry out an Islamic State-inspired shooting at a concert or club, according to an indictment unsealed Monday. The federal indictment also accuses Justin Nojan Sullivan of offering an undercover FBI employee money to kill his parents, who he believed would interfere with his plans for an attack. The 19-year-old suspect, who was arrested in June, "planned to carry out his attack in the following few days at a concert, bar or club where he believed that as many as 1,000 people could be killed using the assault rifle and silencer," the indictment said. The indictment charges Sullivan with attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State and trying to use social media to have his parents killed. He also faces firearms charges.

The Washington Post reports a federal judge late Tuesday denied requests by the man accused of leading the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans in 2012 to be returned to Libya and spared the death penalty on murder charges because of what his defense called his unlawful seizure and interrogation by American authorities. Libyan militant Ahmed Abu Khattala, 44, pleaded not guilty in Oct. 2014 to an 18-count indictment, including charges of murder, conspiracy and destroying a U.S. facility, in the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three others. The attacks, dramatized in the recent Paramount Pictures film “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi,” set in motion an ongoing U.S. investigation that led to Abu Khattala’s capture by U.S. Special Operations forces in Libya in a June 2014 raid.

January 29, 2016

The Washington Post reports a Navy commander accused of trading military secrets for cash bribes, plane tickets, flings with prostitutes and Lady Gaga concert tickets pleaded guilty Thursday to corruption charges in federal court in San Diego. Cmdr. Michael Misiewicz, 48, a graduate of the Naval Academy in Annapolis, became the eighth person to plead guilty in a gigantic corruption case that has rocked the Navy and reached high into the officer corps. More than 100 people remain under investigation for possible criminal, ethical or administrative violations. Misiewicz had contested the charges against him after he was arrested in September 2013 but he agreed to change his plea and appear before a judge late Thursday.

January 28, 2016

The Washington Post reports a man from Kosovo accused of hacking into a U.S. company’s server and passing the personal information of American service members to the Islamic State appeared for the first time in a U.S. court Wednesday. Dressed in a green jail jumpsuit, Ardit Ferizi, 20, said only “yes, sir” during a brief appearance in front of Magistrate Judge Ivan D. Davis in federal district court in Alexandria. The judge appointed the public defender’s office to represent Ferizi, who was led away by U.S. marshals. He is next scheduled to appear in court Friday.

January 26, 2016

The Wall Street Journal reports a complex and contentious civil money laundering case involving an alleged $230 million Russian tax fraud just got more complicated. On Monday, the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals put the case on hold two days before it was set to go to trial in Manhattan federal court. Federal prosecutors from the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office have accused several Russian businessmen and their company Prevezon Holdings of laundering the proceeds of the alleged Russian tax fraud – allegations they have denied. London-based hedge fund Hermitage Capital, and founder William Browder, have provided information to prosecutors and could testify at trial against the defendants. Browder – though not party to the case – has repeatedly sought to have the defendants’ lawyer, John Moscow, and his firm, Baker Hostetler LLP, removed from the case arguing Mr. Moscow previously represented Hermitage in a related matter and is now using information obtained during that representation to attempt to undermine Mr. Browder’s credibility.

January 19, 2016

BBC News reports the Supreme Court has said it will consider a challenge to one of President Barack Obama's key immigration reform plans. The plan would lift the threat of deportation from five million migrants living illegally in the US. A coalition of 26 mostly conservative states, led by Texas, has been successful in lower court challenges. A decision from the highest court is expected in the early summer, just as the election gets into full swing. "We are confident that the policies will be upheld as lawful," said White House spokeswoman Brandi Hoffine. President Obama announced the plan, known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA), in November 2014.

January 15, 2016

The Wall Street Journal reports the wife of a U.S. man who was killed in Jordan in a November terrorist attack is placing the blame on the social media company for allowing Islamic State, or ISIS, which claimed responsibility for the attack, to flourish on the service. The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, claims that “for years, Twitter has knowingly permitted the terrorist group ISIS to use its social network as a tool for spreading extremist propaganda, raising funds and attracting new recruits.

The Washington Post reports a 50-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen, who lived for a time in California, admitted Friday that he was part of a conspiracy to provide firearm scopes, tactical vests and other supplies to a Syrian rebel group that allegedly fought alongside al-Qaeda’s affiliate in that country, authorities said. Amin al-Baroudi, who also goes by Abu al-Jud, pleaded guilty to conspiring to export U.S.-origin goods to Syria in violation of federal sanctions, authorities said. He faces a maximum of 20 years in prison at his sentencing May 6. Significantly, though, Baroudi was not charged with lending support to terrorists, and the particular group he admitted supplying with weaponry, Ahrar al-Sham, has disputed that it has links to al-Qaeda or espouses al-Qaeda’s ideology.

January 13, 2016

The Wall Street Journal reports the Federal Bureau of Investigation can make male trainees complete more push-ups than female trainees without violating sex discrimination laws, a federal appeals court has ruled. The ruling this week by the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Richmond, came in a lawsuit filed by a would-be special agent who was one push-up short of passing the physical fitness test at the FBI’s vaunted training academy at Quantico, Va. Men are required to complete 30 push-ups to pass the physical exam, while female trainees are required to complete 14.

January 08, 2016

The Associated Press reports two Iraqi-born men who came to the United States as refugees have been arrested on terrorism-related charges by federal authorities who allege one traveled to Syria to fight with terrorists in the civil war and the other provided support to the Islamic State group. There was no evidence either man - one from Texas and the other from California - intended or planned attacks in the United States, but the arrests announced Thursday, little more than a month after the deadly San Bernardino attack, immediately brought new life to a U.S. debate over whether the United States is doing enough to screen refugees from Syria for terrorists from that nation.

January 07, 2016

The Washington Post reports the New York Police Department has agreed to settle a pair of federal lawsuits that claimed Muslims were the target of baseless surveillance and investigations because of their religion. As part of the agreement with civil rights groups that was disclosed Thursday in federal court in Manhattan, the NYPD said it would strengthen the oversight of terrorism investigations and ensure that it follows a series of guidelines to avoid religious profiling. The NYPD’s decision to settle the case is a victory for Muslims in the city who asserted that the department’s intelligence division had gone too far in its efforts to identify potential terrorists after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

January 06, 2016

BBC News reports Enrique Marquez Jr, who stands accused of buying the guns used in the San Bernardino attacks, has pleaded not guilty to the five charges he faces. He was the first person arrested over the deadliest terror attack in the US since 9/11, and could face up to 50 years in prison if convicted. The attacks in early December left 14 dead at a health center in California. Marquez is charged with plotting with gunman Syed Farook to attack a university in 2011 and 2012, as well as providing the two rifles that were used by Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, in the attacks.

December 14, 2015

The Washington Post reports a Maryland man has been charged with providing material support to the Islamic State and lying to the FBI, according to U.S. law enforcement officials. Mohamed Yousef ElShinawy, 30, of Edgewood was arrested Friday afternoon at his home. Officials said he was communicating with Islamic State terrorists overseas who sent him money to carry out a possible attack or to travel to Syria. ElShinawy is expected to be arraigned Monday in federal court. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on the details of the case. It was not clear Monday whether ElShinawy has retained an attorney.

December 10, 2015

The Wall Street Journal reports a federal judge in Dallas has refused Texas’ request to block a batch of Syrian refugees from resettling in Texas, ruling that concerns that terrorists may be attempting to infiltrate the resettlement program are too speculative. The decision, which came down Wednesday, responded to an injunction request filed by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, which said nine Syrian refugees were expected to arrive Thursday. In a court filing earlier in the day, lawyers at Texas attorney general’s office said they feared that terrorists could be posing as Syrian refugees to slip into the country. The state’s request for court intervention referred to recent public comments by House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul (R., Texas), who said “individuals with ties to terrorist groups in Syria” are “attempting to gain entry into the U.S. through the U.S. refugee program.” McCaul cited an unclassified letter he received from the National Counterterrorism Center.

December 04, 2015

The Washington Post reports Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter’s landmark decision Thursday to open all jobs to women in the military was greeted by many as a sign of changing times and a move toward true gender equality. But it also raises a related question: Will women be required for the first time ever to register for military drafts, and is it constitutional if they are not? Carter said Thursday that he did not know how the issue would be resolved, but acknowledged that it is a “matter of legal dispute right now.” He added that “unfortunately,” it is subject to ongoing litigation. At least two lawsuits have been filed against the Selective Service System since the combat exclusion policy was appealed in 2013.

December 01, 2015

The Washington Post reports a federal appeals court Tuesday will reconsider a case involving the reach of military commissions and the validity of the prosecution of a former media secretary to Osama bin Laden. In June, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit threw out the remaining charge against Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, a propagandist for al-Qaeda, who was initially convicted in 2008 by a military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In a 2-to-1 ruling, the court said Bahlul, a Yemeni national, could not be tried by a military commission on the charge of conspiracy because it is not an international war crime. The court in September agreed to the government’s request for a rehearing by the full panel. If the initial ruling stands, and the government loses the ability to bring conspiracy charges before military tribunals, it would make it harder for the United States to prosecute low-level detainees at Guantanamo who may have been involved with al-Qaeda but cannot be linked to a specific terrorist act.

November 24, 2015

The New York Times reports a federal appeals court ruled in a decision unsealed on Monday that the Justice Department could continue to conceal internal documents related to targeted killings in the fight against Al Qaeda. A Freedom of Information Act lawsuit forced the Obama administration last year to reveal a secret memo that authorized the killing of the American-born terrorist leader Anwar al-Awlaki. But the new ruling, handed down in October, makes it unlikely that the suit will yield much else in the way of public disclosures. A three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, ruled unanimously that the government could keep secret about 10 documents regarding targeted killing operations against noncitizens abroad because the details of American legal policy and standards on that issue remained classified.

November 13, 2015

The Wall Street Journal reports governments around the globe are asking Facebook Inc. to ban more posts and to hand over more user data, according to the social network’s latest report on government requests. During the first six months of 2015, 92 countries asked the company to restrict 20,568 pieces of content on Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram that they believed violated their laws. That was more than double the 8,774 requests Facebook received during the first half of 2014 from 83 countries. Requests for user account data also rose 18% to 41,214 in the same time frame.

November 10, 2015

Wired reports a federal judge has ordered an immediate halt to the NSA’s controversial phone records collection program, ruling that the program violates the Constitution. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon’s decision to end the collection is a victory for the plaintiffs in the case and for civil liberties groups who have been asserting that the program was unconstitutional since it was first exposed by Edward Snowden in 2013. But while the ruling is important in principle for what it says about the legality of the program, its practical importance is minimal since the ruling only applies to the two plaintiffs who brought suit against the NSA—Larry Klayman, a conservative legal activist, and his business. Even that victory is minor since the NSA’s collection program is already set to end on November 29.

The Wall Street Journal reports a federal appeals court Monday upheld a lower court’s ruling blocking the Obama administration’s plans to defer deportations for more than four million undocumented immigrants. The 2-1 decision by a three-judge panel of the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholds an injunction by a Texas federal judge that has blocked President Barack Obama’s 2014 immigration initiative, after leaders from 26 states challenged its legality. The appeals-court ruling was widely anticipated, after a three-judge panel of the same court rejected the Obama administration arguments to quickly lift the injunction in May. But it paves the way for a potential appeal of the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court—and all but ensures that the immigration initiative will remained mired in a legal dispute through most, if not all, of Obama’s term in office

October 14, 2015

The Guardian reports aurvivors of CIA torture have sued the contractor psychologists who designed one of the most infamous programs of the post-9/11 era. In an extraordinary step, psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen now face a federal lawsuit for their role in convincing the CIA to subject terror suspects to mock drowning, painful bodily contortions, sleep and dietary deprivation and other methods long rejected by much of the world as torture. In practice, CIA torture meant disappearances, mock executions, anal penetration performed under cover of “rehydration” and at least one man who froze to death, according to a landmark Senate report last year.

October 05, 2015

The Washington Post reports a senior Navy intelligence official has been indicted on charges of theft and conspiracy as part of a long-running federal investigation into a secretive military operation featuring the Navy SEALs and untraceable weapons parts. David W. Landersman, formerly the senior director for intelligence in an obscure Pentagon office that dabbled in covert programs, becomes the third person charged in a mysterious case that has already resulted in two convictions. Prosecutors charge that Landersman helped arrange a sweetheart $1.6 million defense contract for his brother - a bankrupt California hot-rod mechanic - to manufacture untraceable rifle silencers that turned out to be junk and cost only $10,000 in parts and labor to manufacture.